


In a hallucination you would laugh at my jokes

by belmanoir



Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Kayfabe Compliant, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-13
Updated: 2017-04-13
Packaged: 2018-10-18 11:24:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10615887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belmanoir/pseuds/belmanoir
Summary: Ariya Daivari doesn't want to be worried about Jack Gallagher's knee. But he is. (Set just after the 4/11/17 205Live, Gallagher vs Perkins.)“How many painkillers did you take?”“The standard number recommended by WWE’s world-class doctors,” Jack says. “Are you...actually here to take care of me? Is this a hallucination? What a splendid hallucination."





	

TJ Perkins is beating the hell out of Jack Gallagher. The _sounds_ Jack is making...

Ariya should be satisfied. He should be laughing. And at first, he is. But as the match goes on, he feels unsettled and somehow annoyed. Probably he’s just bitter because that little turd TJP is the one who finally managed to wipe the smile off Jack Gallagher’s smug face, and not him.

He hopes the knee isn’t hurt too bad. Just because he knows how much injuries suck and he’s not a total asshole, whatever people say.

But it’s none of his business either way.

So he finishes his chat with Drew and Tony—no need for a shower, because unlike Jack, Ariya showed up to 205Live to sit around backstage “in case” they needed him, but they didn’t. He didn’t break a sweat tonight. He eats another catering cookie, drinks the rest of his coffee, picks up his bag, and heads to the parking lot.

Where he sees Jack’s car, just sitting there. He feels a stab of embarrassment that he noticed what car Jack showed up in, but he did. A casual walk past reveals a snappy little overcoat in the back seat and a TARDIS travel mug in the cupholder. Definitely Jack’s.

Is Jack still with the trainers? If he is, that’s not a good sign for his knee. Or is he just sitting backstage somewhere, waiting for everyone to leave so no one sees him limping? How much pain is he in right now? Did somebody take him to the hospital? Who would he ask to drive him? Sure, he’s been palling around with Rich Swann, but Ariya doesn’t think he’d ask Swann for anything real. He’s kind of a loner, in his polite British way. He doesn’t ride with anyone. Not that Ariya’s been paying attention—except to be jealous of the peace and quiet when he’s listening to Noam go on and on about how Alicia Fox is going to leave him.

Maybe Ariya’s the _only_ one who’s been paying attention, though. Maybe there’s no one else who’d even bother to wonder about the stupid mini-hybrid with its stupid Doctor Who mug.

With a sigh, Ariya shifts his duffel higher on his shoulder and heads grimly back into the building.

The trainer says he gave Jack a prescription for painkillers and sent him home. 

Maybe Jack just took a cab. Maybe it’s fine. Ariya searches the backstage area anyway. Not because he cares, but because he’s a responsible, kind guy and not a scoundrel like Jack fucking Gallagher told everyone.

Finally, swallowing his self-consciousness, Ariya goes to the Talent Relations guy, who is just on his way out the door, and asks where Jack’s staying. 

“I can’t give you that information, Ariya,” Carrano says in his superior little voice. “You know better.”

“You call him, then,” Ariya growls.

Jack doesn’t pick up his phone. _Everyone_ answers when Mark Carrano calls. The guy looks a little shook. He fusses with his phone for a minute and dials another number. 

_Double Tree Inn,_ Ariya hears a girl say cheerfully.

“Put me through to Jack Gallagher’s room, please.”

_Just one moment._

The phone rings and rings and rings. No one picks up. Carrano looks pale.

“I’ll drive over and check on him.” Ariya tries to sound sincere. It shouldn’t be so hard, when he is. “Even if you think I want to kill him, I’m not dumb enough to do it when I’ve told you I’m going there.”

The shitstain hesitates. Better to risk a tragic overdose than to give Jack’s lily-white room number to a probable terrorist, apparently. 

Everyone thinks Ariya’s a scoundrel. He’s never done anything to any of them except occasionally win a match. 

...And maybe try to sucker punch Jack Gallagher once or twice but come on, he deserved it. “Or you can let housekeeping find his body in the morning,” Ariya says with a shrug, shouldering his bag again. “If he’s even there. Who knows how many painkillers he took.” He stares Carrano down. If he has to, he can just drive to the Double Tree and try to talk to the girl at the counter. But he’d really rather not.

“Give me a call as soon as you find him, please,” Carrano says, and gives him the room number.

Ariya doesn't break the speed limit getting there. Being pulled over is a delay he can’t afford. 

He pounds on Jack’s door. No answer. He keeps pounding, his nails digging into his palm more sharply with every strike. How long before other guests call the police and he still doesn’t know if Jack is in there?

“Go away,” he finally hears from inside, muffled.

He leans his forehead against the door, taking in his first deep breath in a while. “It’s Ariya Daivari. Carrano sent me to check on you. Open the door.”

A long silence. Probably Jack also thinks Ariya is there to murder him. It shouldn’t sting. He raises his fist to pound again, and the door opens.

Jack looks pale, but he always looks pale. He’s wearing briefs and a T-shirt, but apart from his little pink feet that’s actually less skin than Ariya’s seen before, on plenty of occasions. But his hair is going every which way, one of the points of his mustache has migrated downwards into half of a Fu Manchu, and he’s clinging to the door to keep his balance, his left foot hovering off the ground.

“Mr. Daivari. Welcome to my humble abode.” He giggles.

Ariya feels both intensely relieved, and furious. “It wouldn’t have killed you to answer the phone.”

“I was sleeping. Mostly sleeping. I had hopes of sleeping. Also, I make it a point never to talk to my boss stoned.” His voice is slow and strangely delighted, his accent slipping from his posh affectation.

“You left your car.”

Jack squints at him. “I’m hardly fit to drive. I took a cab.” Ariya tries not to grind his teeth together. Jack smiles impishly and tries to straighten his mustache with the hand that’s not gripping the door. “So, do you want to come in, or would you prefer to murder me on the threshold?”

“Who’s taking care of you?” Ariya tries to look into the room.

Jack looks startled. “I haven’t needed a nursemaid for quite some time now.” He swings the door wider open in clear invitation to a hostile near-stranger, which belies his words pretty effectively. Ariya goes in.

The room is mostly neat. Mostly. Jack’s stuff from tonight is in a few sad heaps on the floor, but everything else is shipshape. A mini electric kettle sits on the counter, entirely alone apart from a couple boxes of tea and a pair of cufflinks. 

“How many painkillers did you take?”

“The standard number recommended by WWE’s world-class doctors,” Jack says. “Are you...actually here to take care of me? Is this a hallucination? What a splendid hallucination. I shall have to send my little gray cells a nice thank-you card. You look delicious in that suit.”

“Did you eat anything with them?” Ariya demands, and then freezes. “What did you say?”

Jack lets go of the door and eyes his bed longingly, swaying slightly on his foot. “I said you looked delicious. Delectable.” He tries to crisply enunciate, but his voice doesn’t quite obey him. He sounds more like...Ariya’s no expert, and probably Jack and Neville would both object strenuously. But he sounds more like Neville than he usually does. He’s a fraud. Ariya hates that. He’s never tried to be anything other than what he is, even when it might have helped him.

But somehow he finds that slipping accent adorable.

“Didn’t they give you a crutch?”

Jack droops. “They did, but I believe it was intended for someone significantly taller.”

Ariya can’t help laughing. “Here.” He reaches for Jack’s arm, stooping a little. Jack hesitates. Ariya tenses—but Jack leans trustingly on him, a slight weight against his side, his hand gripping Ariya’s shoulder. Strange, how vulnerable he seems when Ariya is in street clothes and he’s almost naked.

Jack makes a series of pained noises on the way to the bed that Ariya doesn’t like at all. 

“ _I_ could have hurt you,” Ariya says abruptly. “If that’s all I wanted, I could have. I’m not a scoundrel.”

Jack heaves a shaky sigh. “You don’t have much of a sense of humor though. That’s nearly the same thing.”

Ariya wants to shove him onto the bed. Instead, he waits until he’s lowered Jack onto the edge of the bed to take a sharp step back.

“Where was I? Oh yes. Scrumptious,” Jack goes on. “Edible. Something I want to put in my _mouth_ , Mr. Daivari.” He giggles. “When it’s less numb.”

Ariya becomes abruptly aware that in some way he hadn’t expected, he might be taking advantage of Jack by being here and listening to this. “Did you eat anything with your painkillers?” he asks doggedly. Humorlessly, even. 

He thought he was the only one, though. The only one to go home and picture his bright red handprint raised on Jack’s flesh after a match. He thought Jack knew and was making fun of him.

He begins to distantly suspect that Jack was flirting with him.

“I wasn’t hungry.” Jack grins sloppily. “I’ve taken painkillers before. I’ll be fine.”

Ariya opens his mini-fridge. Empty.

“There was a packet of biscuits,” Jack offers, wincing as he lifts his taped-up leg inch by inch onto the mattress. Ariya resists the urge to help him. “But I finished it this morning.”

Ariya gets it. Jack was in a hotel room without any food, in screaming pain, and he couldn’t bring himself to do anything but swallow his pills and curl up in bed. “I’ll be right back. Can I prop the door open for a minute?” He buys a packet of Saltines and an apple from the snack store by the desk and brings them back up to the room, calling Carrano on his way.

Jack nibbles down a cracker reluctantly. “Would you mind...” he begins. “Would you mind very much making me a cup of tea?”

Ariya crushes something in his chest. “Fine.” He looks at the tea while the water’s heating. One is Twinings Earl Grey, as he expected. The other is Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime Peach Tea, though, with a cutesy little picture of a bear sleeping in a peach tree. He glances at Jack in surprise.

“Don’t tell the Queen,” Jack says, eyes warm and bright, and Ariya has to look away. “What a useful hallucination you are, to be sure.”

“I’m not a hallucination.”

“But isn’t that just what you’d say if you were one?”

“What did the trainers say about your knee?”

Jack sighs. “In a hallucination you would laugh at my jokes. My knee will be fine. In a week or two. I just need to rehab it a little. No permanent damage. They were very clear on that point.” There’s a silence. “It was a humiliating loss though, wasn’t it?”

Surprised again. Humiliating? That match? Ariya keeps his eyes on the tea kettle. “I think there are a lot of guys in the locker room who’d kill for a loss like that.”

“But not you, eh?”

“That’s not what I said. You take everything I say the worst possible way, don’t you? Don’t feel bad, everyone does. Meanwhile you can be as nasty as you want, but you’re pasty and ginger so you're a gentleman anyway.”

Jack smiles crookedly. “I never meant to hurt your feelings, you know. I’m still not quite sure how I did it.”

Ariya remembers his revelation from earlier, that some of the things he thought were mockery might have been flirtation. Incomprehensible malicious flirtation...but still. He brings Jack his cup of tea. It smells disconcertingly like peaches. “Don’t burn yourself.”

“I thought we could be two scoundrels together,” Jack says, sounding sleepy. He’s getting cracker crumbs all over his pillow. “I thought we were...playing a game. You dressed up for our parlay.”

Ariya takes his jacket off, toes off his shoes. He sets his bag down next to the other bed. “Eat your saltines. We’ll talk about it in the morning.” He texts Noam to say he won’t be back. “Wake me up if you need anything.”

Jack screws his face up. “Actually, I could use help getting to the loo right now. Terribly attractive, I know.”

He’s out of his mind on painkillers. Ariya keeps his hands professional. Collegial. But he lets himself be aware of Jack’s waist against his palm. The touch means something new now. Could mean something new, anyway. Maybe.

He wakes a few times in the night, listening for Jack’s breathing and glad when he finds it.

In the morning, he opens his eyes and rolls toward Jack. Who’s awake and watching him. “I was so sure you wouldn’t be here when I woke up.” His voice is crisply upper-crust again, a tight thread of pain underneath it. 

“I’m not a hallucination.”

“Evidently not.” Jack sits up, grimacing, and curls his mustache more or less into place with his fingers. “Thank you. For checking on me. Even if Mark Carrano forced you into it.”

Ariya could let it pass. He wants to let it pass, even. But he forces out, “I saw your car in the parking lot. I—I went to Carrano.”

Jack’s hand pauses in mid-air, halfway to his prescription. He looks surprised, and pleased. “Here, let me take a couple of these, and then I’ll have to impose on you to help me to the shower.”

Ariya frowns. “Is there anything to hold on to in the shower?”

Jack makes a frustrated noise. “I smell appalling. There had better be.”

Ariya bites his tongue before he can offer. “Leave the door open,” he says instead, crossing his arms. “And be careful.”

Jack looks at him for a long, long moment. “I seem to remember being indiscreet last night. I hope I didn’t make you uncomf—”

“Can I take you to breakfast?” Ariya bursts out.

A smile spreads across Jack’s face. “Only if I can kiss you afterwards.”

Ariya tries to keep a straight face. “Is your mustache going to go up my nose?”

Jack laughs. “Not if you’re careful.”

Ariya holds out his hand to shake on the deal.


End file.
